We review all comics a week before we begin publishing them (and in the case of the preprinted Sunday funnies, two weeks earlier). During that review we inspect 164 strips in one sitting. If a strip doesn't meet our standards of fairness and taste, we routinely ask for substitutes from the features syndicates that provide our comics. When news breaks that turns a harmless cartoon into one of bad taste, someone flags it in time.

But not this time. Today's "Broom-Hilda" had passed from memory by the time the slayings occurred.